Donald Trump on Thursday night defended his decision to select several billionaires to serve in his administration, arguing that he wants successful people to be "negotiating" for the country.

"One newspaper criticized me: ‘Why can’t they have people of modest means?’” Trump said at a victory tour rally in Des Moines, Iowa. “Because I want people that made a fortune! Because now they’re negotiating with you, OK?”

A bipartisan group of 27 senators—15 Democrats and 12 Republicans—called on President-elect Donald Trump Thursday to apply pressure to Russia in light of its illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

One of America’s largest anti-immigration groups on Thursday criticized Donald Trump’s choice of fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder for U.S. Secretary of Labor, citing his support for guest worker programs and amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

WASHINGTON (AP) — John Glenn, whose 1962 flight as the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth made him an all-American hero and propelled him to a long career in the U.S. Senate, died Thursday. The last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts was 95.

Democrats in the Senate are preparing to make the confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a big fight given Pruitt's skepticism of climate change.

"This is a four-alarm fire. We are going to do everything we can to stop his nomination," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said on a Thursday call organized by the League of Conservation Voters, according to CNN.

"This is a full-fledged environmental emergency, and we have a person who's not just a climate denier, but a professional climate denier," Schatz added, per CNN. "This is going to be a litmus test for every member of the Senate who claims not to be a denier."

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Dylann Roof's mother suffered a heart attack not long after prosecutors described how her son planned a cold and calculated killing of nine black church members in a racially motivated attack, the white man's attorney said in court documents Thursday.